


Life Goes On

by Asidian



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Brother Feels, Coping, Gen, Loss, Pie, Spaghetti
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 15:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5210801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asidian/pseuds/Asidian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toriel makes pie twice a week.</p><p>Sans can always smell them when he wakes up, lying in the little bed with a roomful of disused toys. The scent creeps in under the door: rich, sweet butterscotch, or savory snail gravy, or Waterfall mushrooms with wild rice. Most mornings, he stares at the ceiling and ignores it.</p><p>He doesn't think about a kitchen with a too-tall sink and an always-underfoot dog. He doesn't think about Papyrus' voice, high and scandalized, the first time Sans made pie: "Brother! Did you spill sugar in this quiche?"</p><p>On the good days, he can pretend he's successful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Goes On

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers abound for one of the neutral ends, folks. More in the after-fic notes, but as soon as I saw this end, the idea for this fic implanted in my brain and I couldn't shake it out.

Toriel makes pie twice a week.

Sans can always smell them when he wakes up, lying in the little bed with a roomful of disused toys. The scent creeps in under the door: rich, sweet butterscotch, or savory snail gravy, or Waterfall mushrooms with wild rice. Most mornings, he stares at the ceiling and ignores it.

He doesn't think about a kitchen with a too-tall sink and an always-underfoot dog. He doesn't think about Papyrus' voice, high and scandalized, the first time Sans made pie: "Brother! Did you spill sugar in this quiche?"

On the good days, he can pretend he's successful.

If he stays in bed long enough, Toriel comes to knock on the door – cracks it open and peers inside with a gentle smile. "Time to wake up, lazybones."

The nickname is the part he hates the most. Some days, he drags himself into the living room early – faces the smell of baking pie, just so he doesn't have to hear it.

* * *

"Do you think they found their way home?" Toriel asks one evening, with no warning at all.

She's in her reading chair, legs stretched out, glasses perched on the end of her nose. When Sans glances her way he sees that she's not looking down at the pages of her book anymore. Maybe she hasn't been for a long time.

"What?" Sans says. He's cross-legged on the floor, crossword spread out in front of him, and the answer he's halfway through is suddenly nothing but meaningless letters.

"The human," says Toriel. "Do you think they got back safely?"

Sans' pencil tip grinds against the paper, leaving a small dark splotch by the answer. "Kid got past the king, they can probably make the walk back down a mountain."

He thinks that will be all. He hopes that will be all.

Sans reads the crossword clue again, and he can't remember what he'd been writing.

Toriel says, soft and thoughtful: "Do you think they will visit?"

Without lips, Sans can only ever grin, but Toriel's gotten good at reading him. He bends for a closer look at the next clue, dips down far enough to hide his face. "It's a big world out there, Tori. Me, I already wished the kid bone voyage."

She chuckles, but it's a weak sound, and he feels guilty for causing it.

So he says, "But hey, you never know. If there's anything worth falling down a hole in a mountain for, it's your pie."

* * *

Every Wednesday, Sans goes to pick up books from the library. He checks out nonfiction accounts and nature encyclopedias, and the occasional new waterlogged paperback that's been fished out of the dump. He returns whatever Tori's finished reading in the past week, and then he walks to Waterfall to buy snails fresh from the farm.

When they're low on grocery money, he opens up his hotdog stand and spends a few hours cooking water sausages. Sometimes, if an act cancels without notice, he fills a spot on the performance schedule at the MTT hotel.

He naps in the middle of the day, and he never vacuums his new room, and he makes dumb jokes that would have made his brother bang his skull against the wall.

In short, life goes on.

* * *

Some nights, Toriel cooks dinner.

She stands in the kitchen with two or three pots simmering, fire magic hot and bright. Sans lounges against the wall and cracks jokes, and he taste-tests whatever Tori sends his way.

Some nights, it's Sans at the stove and Toriel throwing out the bad puns.

It's a pretty good arrangement, right up until the day he mentions Papyrus' affinity for spaghetti.

"Oh," says Toriel, beaming. "How lovely. You should make one of his recipes."

Sans can't think of a way to tell her no.

So he brings home noodles and tomatoes, and he makes pasta. He talks while he waits for the water to boil – about Papyrus' cooking lessons, and half the fridge being given over to a culinary museum, and 2 am rigatoni marathons. He talks about how Papyrus brought plates to the shopkeepers in Snowdin if he knew they'd be working long hours, and about how his brother always did the mixing with his fists.

Sans doesn't do the mixing with his fists. When he's finished, the spaghetti's even passable.

Toriel has two plates, and she says it's the best pasta she's ever tasted.

* * *

Life goes on.

Only sometimes.

Sometimes, Sans stops outside an empty house in Snowdin. He cleans out Papyrus' mailbox, because his brother always hated it getting cluttered.

He unlocks the door and wanders inside, sits on the couch and watches the tv that's still set to his brother's favorite channel. He should clean out the fridge eventually, knows the spaghetti sitting in pristine rows with all-caps labels has long since gone bad, but he can't quite bring himself to do it.

In the kitchen, there's dust on the stove and the cookware. In Papyrus' room, there's dust on the bed, and the action figures, and the red scarf hanging from a hook in the closet.

Sans carried it home himself, spread it with careful hands, a pinch at a time, on everything his brother loved best.

Life goes on, but Sans wishes it wouldn't. He's ready for a do-over.

Only sometimes.

Sometimes, he wonders if the anomaly has grown bored with its games, and this is what he's stuck with.

* * *

"You should ask your brother to come for Christmas," Toriel says, when the days start getting colder. "We will have a party, just the three of us."

Sans is in the middle of hanging berries from a pine branch when she makes the suggestion. He pauses mid-motion, mind flooding with letters to Santa written in a clumsy hand. With late nights wrapping presents after Papyrus has gone to bed. With shredded paper the day after, and robot action figures in dramatic poses all around the house.

"My bro's a busy guy," Sans says. "Dunno if he could make it." He finishes tying off the berries, a vivid red against the pine needles. He thinks of a vibrant scarf lying in the snow, a final splash of color, and his hand hardly shakes at all.

"You will ask, though, will you not?" Toriel's smile is gentle. When she sets her hand atop Sans', the fur is warm and plush.

She thinks they're not speaking, Sans knows. That they had a fight. She's mending bridges, looking out for him, the way she looks out for everyone.

"Sure, Tori," he says. "I'll ask."

**Author's Note:**

> In case you haven't seen/gotten this ending, this fic's based on what happens when you kill only Papyrus. Sans moves into the Ruins with Toriel and never tells her what the human did, because he doesn't want her to feel awful. 
> 
> Ow, this game. Ow, my heart.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I'd send a postcard to you, dear](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5245049) by [taizi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi)




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